Restructure Extracurricular Activity Back-end?

[kylegracey]

I'm running into problems as I'm building the new EC progress page. For example:

If {{user_extracurricular_activity.details[0].leadership}} doesn't exist, I want the containing div to dissapear. But currently I can't do that with ng-if="user_extracurricular_activity.details[0].leadership != null" because details[0].leadership="" in the object instead of "null".

---

Now that I'm thinking about it, should we make the EC activities behave kind of like the Service Hours Log? So instead of 'description' which is confusing, can we have an 'achievement' list?

Activity: Soccer

Leadership Role: Captain

Achievement: Qualified for nationals Date: 8/5/15

Achievement: Placed 3rd in Nationals Date: 10/1/15

Achievement: Named Team MVP Date 11/3/15

And so on? Achievements could also be another useful metric we could play with visually.

[Jakeah]

This isn't ideal, but does setting it != '' work?

Also, I like the idea of achievments

[Jakeah]

We decided we're going to leave it as a description for now. If we want to add an acheivment infrastructure later, we can; however, right now it would take a lot of work and isn't necessarily a priority. Sorry that it makes the extracurricular progress page less attractive.

[kylegracey]

Ok. It's not necessarily about making them more attractive. They look fine as is. I'm trying to get us more useful data. Description on an EC activity is kind of a confusing concept in general.

Activity: Soccer Description: Uhh.... kick a ball with my foot?

[neelbhat88]

Kyle, I agree, to get more useful data "Description" doesn't make sense. In old Imua we used to have them write sentences about their involvement just like it would show up on a resume. So in the Soccer example students would write "Organized weekly conditioning." So maybe instead of "Description" we can say "Describe your involvement" to get some better data there?

Neel Bhat

On Mon, Sep 29, 2014 at 1:43 PM, Kyle Gracey notifications@github.com wrote:

Ok. It's not necessarily about making them more attractive. They look fine as is. I'm trying to get us more useful data. Description on an EC activity is kind of a confusing concept in general.

Activity: Soccer Description: Uhh.... kick a ball with my foot?

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/neelbhat88/imuadev/issues/461#issuecomment-57208279.

[kylegracey]

I'm ok with not changing it until we have the time to do it right. I'm just letting you guys know that the request wasn't about making it look pretty. The more good/useful data we can take in, the better.

[neelbhat88]

From Hoku's perspective having them describe their involvement is useful data since this is what students would put on their resumes when describing their extracurriculars. We did it that way in old Imua for that reason and not just because we needed a box to fill. In new Imua, instead of having them add "sentences" we started with a text area but maybe that's not getting students to enter the data in the format like it would be on their resume. Maybe Mark can comment on other things that he would find useful for extracurriculars

Neel Bhat

On Mon, Sep 29, 2014 at 2:35 PM, Kyle Gracey notifications@github.com wrote:

I'm ok with not changing it until we have the time to do it right. I'm just letting you guys know that the request wasn't about making it look pretty. The more good/useful data we can take in, the better.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/neelbhat88/imuadev/issues/461#issuecomment-57215885.

[mcassid3]

The ultimate goal is for students to articulate what they actually did in their activity in a resume-friendly way over the course of their involvement. By graduation, I should be able to see a quick few sentences that most accurately represents their involvement and contributions to their activity.

This is what a resume friendly entry for an activity could look like:

Ex: Soccer (Semester 1 - Semester 4) ---Led practice for my coach three times a week ---Made it state finals in 2008 and took 2nd place ---Earned the WHS Sportsmanship Award

Whether you view these bullets as "Achievements" or "Descriptions", I think their fundamentally similar things that serve a mutual purpose: filling up resume content. I think they should be summative and representative in nature, not necessarily like service where it is date/event specific.

Having something like "--- 6/28 Won our game against Marion Catholic to go to state championship" would not really be resume-friendly in my mind. It also does not summarize the experience, but instead isolated occurrences over time. I think I'd prefer to see the "Big Picture" of tell me what you did that made this experience meaningful.

[kylegracey]

Ok. I get that. But if you have those individual achievements/entries/whatever you want to call them, you can pull out the big ones and add them in a resume friendly format. It also enables ton of other cool ways to use the data on top of having them on your resume. Mark, those things you just listed are perfect for achievements/entries/whatever.

What you can't do is take one generic description per semester and turn it into anything really interesting or useful. We'll just end up with a bunch of odd descriptions that are slightly different semester to semester, with no way to act on them.

Guys. This seems like a strange conversation to me. I'm literally just asking to improve the EC activities. If you're pushing back so hard because it's something that takes time to build, that's fine! I'm totally ok waiting! We don't have to do it right this second. We've all got a ton on our plates, I know.

...but if you're really arguing that one generic description box per activity is better than individual, dated, categorized achievements or entries.... I don't even know what to say to that.

[neelbhat88]

We're not pushing back at all, just making sure in the end, regardless of how we do it, that we are getting what we care about out of it (so this was good to go through this convo). So based on what we've said so far, the current way we are doing it will NOT give us what we care to capture at the end. Which means, yes, we'll need to change the current way it's being done and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

The achievements thing you are describing absolutely gets us what we need. I have some questions about the details there (e.g. how do we know what the "big ones" are, etc) but those are things we'll flesh out as we talk about this more. But in the end this enhancement is still valid because we need to restructure it, and we should probably wait a little until we flesh out the details for sure.

Neel Bhat

On Mon, Sep 29, 2014 at 4:33 PM, Kyle Gracey notifications@github.com wrote:

Ok. I get that. But if you have those individual achievements/entries/whatever you want to call them, you can pull out the big ones and add them in a resume friendly format. It also enables ton of other cool ways to use the data on top of having them on your resume. Mark, those things you just listed are perfect for achievements/entries/whatever.

What you can't do is take one generic description per semester and turn it into anything really interesting or useful. We'll just end up with a bunch of odd descriptions that are slightly different semester to semester, with no way to act on them.

Guys. This seems like a strange conversation to me. I'm literally just asking to improve the EC activities. If you're pushing back so hard because it's something that takes time to build, that's fine! I'm totally ok waiting! We don't have to do it right this second. We've all got a ton on our plates, I know.

...but if you're really arguing that one generic description box per activity is better than individual, dated, categorized achievements or entries.... I don't even know what to say to that.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/neelbhat88/imuadev/issues/461#issuecomment-57233719.

[neelbhat88]

Let's do this (talked to Mark and Kyle about it - I'm writing out what we just talked about)

The description stays on the Activity - so if you want to you can describe what that activity is (it will come with the activity when you select it later on in future semesters). So in Semester 1 if I say I'm in "The Potato Pete Club" I can add a description explaining what that is. When I pick the activity again in Semester 3 the description comes with it (for us Techies its on the Activity not the Detail)

We should slightly change (not a huge change since our backend is built like this already) the details so that we can add multiple "Achievements/Sentences/Things/Whatevers" per activity in each semester. This would have a box to describe the "thing", and add a date if they want. Students can then enter things that describe what they are doing/how they are involved/achievements per activity per semester.

This will allow us to in the future, when we want to create a resume for them, give them a list of their extracurriculars with all of these "things" listed and allow them to pick some number of them to show up on their resume.

@kylegracey, @mcassid3, does this sum up what we talked about? Add anything else that is missing